by Samuel Sykes
“Komga.”
The resonant bass of Hongwe’s voice drew their attentions to the Gonwa as he stalked forward, spear in hand, with a trio of lizardmen behind him.
“Ah,” Dreadaeleon said, lip curling up in a sneer. “Thank goodness the cavalry has arrived, with sticks and rocks, just in time to be of absolutely no use.”
Hongwe gave a distinct snort of indifference as he stalked past the wizard and crouched down alongside the shore, staring intently at the surf as though he could track the ship through the waves.
“I came when I heard the longface escaped,” he said solemnly. “When the first longface burst from the caves of Komga, she brought down six of us before we were able to put enough spears in her to kill her. When the next twenty came, we were forced to flee, to abandon our families to their mercies just to save ourselves.
“What the island is now, is not our home,” he said. “It vomits smoke and fire. It is full of metal and there are no more trees. Our families are dead, even if they walk among the living, still. They are not ours anymore.”
“The netherlings have a base there, then,” Denaos said, raising a brow. “And you know how to get there.”
“I do,” Hongwe said, rising. “I have canoes to take you there, as well.” He turned and began to stalk away. “On the far side of the island. They will make it there by nightfall. We will arrive by dawn. They are faster and their lead grows each moment we—”
He paused, looking over his shoulder to note that neither human had begun to follow him. He furrowed his scaly brow.
“There is a problem?”
“Well, no,” Denaos said, “I mean, not really …”
“It’s just that, usually you warn about the danger and the fact that no one has ever returned,” Dreadaeleon said, shrugging. “I mean, you make a big deal out of it, usually.”
He scowled at them. “This is my home that I speak of. These are my kin that I wish to avenge. This is your friend they have taken.”
“Oh, no, I get that, really,” Dreadaeleon said. “It’s just, you know, surprising and all …”
Hongwe sighed. “Would you like me to offer some sort of warning?”
The two men glanced to each other. Denaos sighed, rubbed the back of his neck.
“No, I guess not,” he said, hurrying to catch up, “I mean, Asper probably would hate us for it.”
EIGHT
THE WORLD’S MASK
Three hours after they had left Teji, they had found the mist, and the world that Lenk knew ceased to have any meaning.
It had been dark when they arrived. The sun had slipped quickly away from them, unwilling to watch. The water was a deep onyx, the sky was indigo, and the distant trees of Teji’s greenery could not have been diminished even in the dying light.
The mist did not come out of nowhere, did not coming rolling in with any flair for the dramatic. It was there, existing as it always had. It didn’t shift as they came closer, didn’t see a need to impress them. It had been there long before they arrived. It would be there long after they were all dead.
Lenk wasn’t sure how long they had been in there. Time seemed to be another one of those things that the mist didn’t see a need for.
Everything within the mist was gray, a solid, monochrome mass that hung around on all sides. Not oppressive, Lenk noted; it couldn’t be bothered to be oppressive, just as it couldn’t be bothered to recognize nightfall or moonlight or any sky beyond its own endless gray.
The sole exception was the sea. The mist still recognized it, as an old man acknowledges an old tree, impassive and careless for the world going on around it. And, as such, it was granted the privilege of being the only source of sound within the mist: the gentle lapping of waves as the ship bobbed about upon them, the soft hiss of foam dissipating.
The squish of blood-tinged insect innards being shoveled out over the railing in handfuls spoiled the mood slightly.
He fought down his revulsion and watched Kataria’s plan in action. With her fingertip to forearm coated in glistening, sticky ichor, the shict seemed to have no such squeamishness. With a sort of unnerving mechanical monotony, she reached into the bucket and hoisted out another handful of bug guts to pour over the side and add to the long line of floating innards they had left behind them.
She nodded at the ensuing splash, brushing her hands off as though that might make a difference.
“I’ll let that stew for a bit and then shovel in the next load,” Kataria said, turning to him. “Hopefully there’s enough here to work, otherwise we’ll just start tossing anything else that’s pungent and moist and see if that takes.”
Lenk stared at her for a moment. “So, do you sit around thinking of precisely the right words to horrify me or do they just come to you?”
“It’s been a long trip,” she said. “I’ve had time. But that’s not important.” She gestured to him with her chin. “How’s the shoulder?”
Well, now that you mention it, Lenk said inwardly. It feels amazing. Despite having attempted to cauterize my own wound and opening myself up for severe infection, I feel absolutely no pain or so much as a stiff kink. As well it might, what with the voice in my head chanting “you will feel no pain,” over and over.
He blinked as she stared at him expectantly.
Probably shouldn’t say that.
“Agreed,” the voice chimed in from the back of his head.
That wasn’t meant for you.
“Tell her nothing. She does not need to know. She does not need to hear. She will die. Our duty will go on.”
“So … what?” Kataria asked after the long, noisy silence. “Stupefied silence means … good? Bad?”
“Fine,” he said.
“Good. We’re going to need it for the plan.” She turned to Gariath, who sat beside the rudder, claws meticulously working on something in his lap. “And that.”
Despite the vow he had made to himself never to let his eyes get anywhere near the dragonman’s lap, Lenk couldn’t help but peer over. A spear, long and thick and made of unreliable-looking wood, lay upon Gariath’s kilt. A knot, thick and inelegant, occupied his attentions as it trailed from the rope pooled about his feet.
He seemed neither particularly interested in the job he was doing, nor the people looking at him. That fact emboldened Lenk enough to speak, albeit in a whisper.
“I don’t know how comfortable I am with a plan that puts an uncomfortable-looking piece of wood in Gariath’s hands,” he whispered to Kataria.
“You don’t trust him?”
“The circumstances of this and the last time we were in a boat are pretty similar. You’ll recall he had a spear that time, too. And that ended with us nearly drowning.”
“He tried to kill you,” the voice whispered, “he’s done it before. He will do it again. So will she.”
“True,” Kataria replied, scratching her chin. “And yet, each of us has almost killed everyone else at some point. I guess I have a hard time holding that against them anymore.”
“Point being, that’s always been by accident,” Lenk said.
“Lies,” the voice countered silently.
“Or by some other weird happenstance,” he continued, trying to ignore it. “Gariath is nothing if not direct. There’s no telling what he might do.”
She cast a sidelong glare upon him. “Men who frequently go into raving, violent fits for no reason are in a poor position to accuse others of unpredictability.”
“I’d rest easier,” Lenk spoke a little more firmly, “if I knew exactly why he’s here.”
“You told him to come.”
“Like that’s ever been a factor in what he does.”
“Well, you wanted him here.”
“Yes, but why—”
“Because he can pound a man’s head into his stomach.”
“I wasn’t finished,” he snapped. He cast a glare over his shoulder, to the dragonman that had yet to look up. “He’s been fascinated with the Shen. He didn’t t
ry to stop them when they attacked us nights ago. I mean, they tried to kill us and he wants to …”
“Kill us,” the voice whispered. “Betray us.”
“He’s going to …”
“Destroy us. Murder us.”
“He’s …”
“Weak. Treacherous. Going to die. We’re going to kill them.”
“He …” Lenk felt his own voice dying in his throat. “Kill …”
A pair of hands seized him, pulled him around roughly.
Lenk had never felt entirely comfortable under Kataria’s gaze; her eyes were too green, they hid too much and searched too hard. When they looked over him, seeking something he had no idea whether he even had, he felt naked.
And now that she stared at him, past him, searching for nothing, seeing all she needed to, he felt weak.
“Don’t,” she said, simply and sternly.
“What?”
“Don’t,” she said. “Whatever you’re thinking, no. It’s not. It never was. Don’t.”
“But you can’t—”
“I can. I will. Don’t.”
“But—”
“No.”
He nodded, stiffly. The world was silent.
Until Kataria looked to Gariath, anyway.
“How’s it look?” she asked.
The dragonman held it up, in all its jagged, rusted glory, and gave a derisive snort. “Third most useless thing on this ship.” He set it to the side. “Fourth if I use that bucket of slop for holding something.”
“Like what?” Lenk asked.
“Whatever’s left of you, if we spend another hour out here doing nothing.”
Absently, the young man thought he might have a harder time blaming Gariath for that. Thus far, Kataria’s plan had yielded nothing more than a lot of time sitting in the middle of a great, gray nothingness, learning the subtle differences in aroma between the thorax and the antennae of a giant dead cockroach.
Not that the efforts aren’t completely unappreciated, he thought as he peered over Gariath’s horns.
Dredgespiders, dog-sized and many-legged, glided in their wake. Heedless of the mist’s authority, they capered across the surface of the water, spinning great nets of silk behind them, which they used to trap the floating innards and spirit them away from hungry competitors.
“We can kill her right now,” the voice whispered. “Find Jaga on our own. Easier to infiltrate, easier to navigate. Without her. Everything will be easier without her. Her plan does nothing.”
His eye twitched. “You raise a good point.”
“Hmm?”
He turned back to her. “What, exactly, is your plan? So far, we’ve been doing nothing but hoisting guts into the water and waiting.”
“Oh, sorry,” she replied with a snarl. “I should have asked about your plan for finding the mysterious island of death shrouded in a veil of mist—” she paused, pointed up at their limp sail, “—with no wind.” She folded her arms challengingly. “Since we’re waiting and all.”
“Well, my plan was to bob in the water for eternity while contemplating the choices I had made in my life that had led me to agree to the half-cocked plan of a woman whose natural scent is somehow improved by the perfume of rotting, blood-tinged insect guts,” he snapped back. “Of course, since I had deduced this to be an integral part of your plan, I didn’t want to steal your glory.”
“The plan calls for bait,” she said. “Whether said bait is stunted, ugly, and sarcastic is not specified.”
“But this is?” he asked, making a sweeping gesture around him. “How could this possibly get us any closer to Jaga?”
“The plan does not allow for senseless inquiry!”
“It’s not senseless to question—”
“The plan will not be questioned!”
“Someone has to!” he all but shouted back. “I’ve gone this far on faith that you don’t deserve! I need to know something for me to think that any of this is going to work! Bait? Bait for what? Why does it have to have Gariath’s blood in it? What are we waiting for?”
His voice did not echo. The mist swallowed it whole, leaving only silence. A silence so crisp that it was impossible not to hear the sound of Gariath’s nostrils twitching as he drew in a breath and a scent upon it.
The dragonman rose, gripping the spear tightly as he turned and stared out over the water. Man and shict followed, three gazes cast out upon the long trail of bobbing, glistening guts behind them and the dredgespiders that danced amongst them.
For but a single breath longer.
All at once, the insects scattered silently, scurrying into the mist and disappearing inside its gray folds. The mist seemed to close in, as though the silence had grown too uncomfortable even for it and it sought to draw in upon itself. It was dense. It was dark.
Not nearly dark enough to obscure the roiling ripples in the sea, the massive black shadow that bloomed beneath them, the great crest that jutted from the water and followed the line of bait.
Quickly. And right toward them.
“The answer to all of your questions,” Kataria whispered breathlessly, “is that.”
It came cresting out of the waves, a wall of water rising before it. Through the mist and spray, they could see parts of it: the sharp, beak-like snout, the shadow-dark azure of its hide, and the single eye burning a bright, furious yellow through the water.
“Down!” Kataria shrieked, seizing the railing and holding on.
What else does one do when being charged by an Akaneed? Lenk thought as he followed suit.
Gariath, however, remained unmoving. He stood stoically at the rudder, baring the slightest glint of teeth in a small, deranged smile that grew broader as the great shape barreled closer toward them.
“I knew you’d come back,” he growled.
“Damn it, Gariath,” Lenk shouted. “I thought we were done with this! Grab something and get down!”
Apparently, lunacy was not something the dragonman was ever quite done with. He extended his broad arms to the side, a mother embracing a giant, roaring child.
“Come and get me,” he said to the sea.
And the sea spoke back, in a cavernous howl from a gaping maw.
The wave struck before the beast did, a great wash of salt that swept over the vessel’s deck and sent Lenk straining to keep from being washed away. Salt blinded him, froth choked him, he had barely enough sense to see if Kataria had held on, let alone for the beast rising out of the water.
The sudden shock that jolted the ship and sent him sprawling, however, was impossible to ignore.
One hand grasping desperately at the railing, the other pulled back a sopping curtain of hair to behold the sight of teeth. The rudder, the railing, the entire rear of the vessel had disappeared behind the great row of white needles, the wood loosing an anguished, splintering groan as the Akaneed’s bellowing snarl sent timbers trembling in its grip.
Lenk’s eyes swept the deck, soaking, choking and half-blind. Of their companion, there was no sign but the spear lying upon the deck, tangled amidst the rope.
“Where the hell is Gariath?” he bellowed over the cacophony of ship and serpent.
“How should I know?” Kataria screamed back.
“This plan is terrible!”
“THIS ISN’T PART OF THE PLAN!” she shrieked.
It wasn’t until Lenk’s sword was out in his hand that he took stock of the beast before him. From its thick hide, a single eye stared back at him, burning with more than enough hatred for the missing eye. That one had been put out long ago by the very dragonman that was now inconsiderately drowning somewhere overboard. They had met this Akaneed before.
His sword hadn’t been much use then, either.
The beast let out a reverberating snarl, its head jerking down sharply. The boat followed it down with a wooden shriek, its deck tilting up and sending Lenk’s legs out from under him and his grip slipping from the salt-slick railing.
He skidded down the deck wi
th a cry, striking against the beast’s snout and kicking wildly against its slippery hide as he scrambled for purchase. Pressed against it, he couldn’t hear Kataria’s cries over the heated snort of its breath and the throaty rumble of its growls. He could see her, though, one hand clinging to the railing, the other reaching down futilely for him.
He clawed desperately against the vertical deck, ignoring the pain in his fingers, ignoring the red that stained the deck as he sought to jam his blade into it and haul himself up. He had just drawn it back when the ship buckled sharply again, sending him skidding.
The last thing he saw was the beast’s mouth open a little wider.
When it came crashing shut behind him, there was only a wet, pressing darkness and the stench of old fish.
He balanced precariously upon the stern of the upended vessel, the wood splintering, snapping beneath his feet as the timbers were ground between the glistening muscles of the beast’s gullet. They closed in upon him, pressing his left arm to his chest, closing in upon his head, growing tighter with each shuddering breath.
Above him, a gate of teeth had shut out sky and sound. Below him, a guttural growl rose from a black hole of a throat that drew closer with each shudder of the ship. His mind flooded, panicked thoughts tearing through his skull, incomprehensible, indistinguishable.
Why isn’t Kataria doing anything?
Except that one.
“She does nothing.”
And that one, though it didn’t really quite count as his thought.
“Sword.”
What?
“SWORD.”
The answer became as solid as the steel in his hand the moment he stopped looking up and down and stared straight ahead.
At the glistening wall that was the roof of the beast’s mouth.
He had a distinct memory of drawing the blade back, plunging it into a thick knot of muscle, and wrenching it free with a vicious twist of metal. Past the great burst of blood that came washing over him, the agonized roar that accompanied it, everything was a blur. The ship crashed back into the sea, his sword clattered to the deck as it upended. He did not.
